Chapter 8 #2
“But if you stay close to me—under my command, inside my perimeter—you survive the night. Every night.” His head tilted, cyan eyes tracing her face with an attention that made the hum of the bracer feel louder. “Though nothing about this will leave you unchanged.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?”
“It’s supposed to inform you.” His muzzle dipped lower.
Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him—furnace-warmth against the cold stone air, the temperature differential so stark her almost leaned closer…
before she shut that impulse down. “I am not the worst thing in these woods, Elsa.”
Her name in his mouth. Low and rough, the translator rendering it with a vibration the device couldn’t quite smooth out. Like the word had edges in his language that human phonetics couldn’t carry.
“But I may be the most dangerous thing in them to you.” His teeth caught the light when he spoke—not bared, not threatening, just visible in a way that reminded her exactly what dangerous species she was bargaining with.
“The Fallen kill without thought. Without purpose. Hunger and madness, nothing more.”
He paused. Something shifted behind those glowing eyes—the predator receding just enough for something sharper to surface. More deliberate.
“I don’t want to kill you.” The words landed quiet. Almost soft, if a voice that deep could manage soft. “I want to keep you… alive that is.”
The distinction shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t have sent that involuntary pulse through up her spine. The gem engraved in her new bracer flaring once against her wrist like it had registered the spike in her heartbeat.
Elsa held his gaze. Refused to step back, even though every survival instinct she’d honed across three years of deep-space navigation screamed at her to put distance between herself and the seven-foot apex predator who’d just told her he wanted to own her.
“There’s a difference?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. Good.
Sylas’s mouth curved. Not the flash of teeth she’d learned to read as warning—something slower. Darker. A smile that knew exactly what it was doing and didn’t care that she could see it.
“The things beyond this fortress kill without discrimination. Without desire. Their minds corrupted by Moon Tear exposure. Their allegiance to no one but themselves and their own survival.” He straightened, pulling back just enough to let her breathe again.
“What I want is specific. What I want has a habit of asking questions when silence would be safer.”
He turned toward the door before she could respond to that, expecting her to follow.
“And we’re out of time. The team is waiting.”
Elsa took a breath. Felt the weight of the cloak, the warmth of the clothes, the hum of the bracer against her skin.
Proof she was still alive. Still thinking. Still finding ways to adapt instead of breaking as she followed him into the corridor.
Whatever it took to survive this treacherous planet filled with dangerous monsters.
The storm-woods lived up to their name.
Wind howled through skeletal trees, driving snow sideways in sheets that cut visibility to arm’s length. The cold bit through even the heavy cloak, finding every gap in her clothing to sink frozen teeth into exposed skin.
Elsa pulled the hood tighter, grateful for the fur lining that blocked the worst of the wind. Ahead, Sylas moved through the blizzard like it didn’t exist, his massive frame cutting a path she struggled to follow.
Behind them, three Lux Knights maintained formation. She recognized Xar’s dark pelt and predatory grace, but the other two were strangers. All of them moved with the same eerie efficiency, unbothered by conditions that would kill a human in minutes.
The fortress had disappeared behind them almost immediately, swallowed by white chaos. Elsa had tried to track their direction, memorize landmarks, but the storm erased everything. No sun to navigate by. No stars. Just endless white and the dark shapes of trees that all looked identical.
“How much further?” She had to shout over the wind.
Sylas glanced back, his cyan eyes cutting through the snow. “Another mile. Maybe two. Depends on the drifts.”
Two miles. In this. With her human endurance and his species’ casual indifference to cold that would give her hypothermia.
She gritted her teeth and kept walking.
The terrain rose beneath her boots, subtle at first, then more pronounced. Uphill. The wind hit harder here, less blocked by trees, and Elsa’s lungs burned with every breath.
Her navigator’s brain kicked in despite the conditions. They were climbing the outer ridge—she could feel it in the slope, in the way the wind patterns shifted. The crash site had been in a valley. To reach it from this angle, they’d crest this ridge and descend the opposite side.
“We should angle northeast,” she called out. “Cut the distance by a third if we’re heading to the crater.”
Sylas stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into him. He turned, snow clinging to his fur, expression unreadable. “How do you know that?”
“The slope. Wind direction. We’re climbing the eastern ridge—I remember the terrain from the crash.” Elsa pointed through the storm, hoping she had the angle right. “The crater is northwest from here. If we keep going straight, we’ll overshoot.”
The Lux Knights exchanged glances. Xar’s green eyes narrowed with something between suspicion and curiosity.
Sylas studied her for a long moment. Then he altered course, angling in the direction she’d indicated.
Trusting her.
Or testing her.
Either way, it was progress.
They climbed in silence after that, the storm’s roar drowning any attempt at conversation. Elsa focused on breathing, on putting one foot in front of the other, on not thinking about how tired she was or how her muscles screamed or how every exposed inch of skin had gone numb.
The ridge crested. Below, through gaps in the blowing snow, she caught glimpses of the valley.
The crater.
Her escape pod, half-buried in frozen earth, its hull cracked open like an egg. Smoke had long since stopped rising from the wreck, but the scar it had left in the landscape remained—a wound of twisted metal and scorched ground that didn’t belong in this frozen wilderness.
“There.” Elsa pointed. “That’s it.”
Sylas’s gaze followed her gesture. “The core?”
“Navigation systems are in the bow section. That’s where the power integration would be.” She traced the wreckage with her eyes, mapping internal layouts onto external damage. “If it survived the impact, it’s in the forward compartment. Starboard side.”
“Show me.” Not a request.
They descended into the valley, the slope treacherous with ice hidden beneath fresh snow. Elsa slipped twice. The second time, Sylas caught her before she could fall, his massive paw closing around her arm with surprising gentleness.
He released her immediately, as if the contact burned.
The wreckage loomed larger as they approached. Elsa’s chest tightened, memories flooding back. The alarms. The captain’s voice. The sickening lurch as atmosphere tore apart around them. The moment of impact that had stolen consciousness and nearly her life.
She’d survived this. Somehow.
The pod’s interior was a disaster. Seats torn from their moorings, control panels shattered, supplies scattered across frozen metal. Sylas had to crouch to fit through the breach in the hull, his bulk filling the narrow space.
Elsa squeezed past him, muscle memory guiding her to the navigation station. Or what was left of it.
“Here.” She knelt, brushing debris aside. “The core mounts integrate with the nav computer. Should be—”
A growl.
Not from Sylas. From outside.
Every Lux Knight tensed. Xar moved to the breach, his posture shifting from guard to hunter in a heartbeat.
“Fallen,” he snarled.
Sylas’s head snapped toward the sound, ears pinning back. “How many?”
“At least three. Maybe more. They’re circling.”
Elsa’s blood went cold. The Fallen. The mad ones. The creatures that had consumed too much Moon Tear and lost their minds to feral hunger.
Another growl, closer now. Then another from a different direction.
They were surrounded.
Sylas turned to Elsa, his expression grim. “Can you find the core? Now?”
Her hands shook as she pried open the access panel. Inside, a tangle of wiring and crystal matrices greeted her. The navigation system’s heart.
And there—nestled in its mounting cradle—a Moon Tear crystal the size of her fist. It pulsed with pale blue light, unmarred by the crash, its facets catching the dim illumination and throwing it back in prismatic beauty.
“Found it.” She reached for the release mechanism.
A shadow moved past the breach.
Xar lunged, intercepting something that Elsa only caught in peripheral nightmare—matted fur, wild eyes, teeth too many and too sharp. The impact sent both creatures tumbling into the snow outside.
More shapes materialized from the storm. Four. Six. Too many.
“Get that core!” Sylas roared, launching himself at the breach.
Elsa’s fingers fumbled with the release. It was designed for human hands, but the mechanism had warped in the crash. She pulled, twisted, slammed her palm against the housing.
Nothing.
Outside, the sounds of battle—snarls and screams and the wet thud of bodies hitting frozen ground. The Lux Knights fought with brutal efficiency, but the Fallen kept coming.
Elsa grabbed a piece of twisted metal from the floor and jammed it into the release mechanism as a lever. Then threw her weight against it.
The crystal popped free.
She caught it, the surface warm against her frozen fingers. Energy hummed through the facets, resonating with the bracer on her wrist in a way that made her bones vibrate.
Too much. Too intense. The crystal was magnifying whatever the bracer did, feeding power through her nervous system faster than her body could handle.
Her vision blurred. The world tilted.
“Elsa!” Sylas’s voice, distant through the roar in her ears.
She stumbled toward the breach, the crystal clutched against her chest. Made it three steps before her legs gave out.
Strong arms caught her. Fur against her face, heat radiating through the cold.
Sylas lifted her as if she weighed nothing, the crystal still pressed between them. She felt his heart hammering against her cheek, felt the vibration of his growl reverberating through his chest.
“Fall back!” His command cut through the chaos. “We have what we came for!”
The world became motion and snow and the steady rhythm of his stride as he ran. Elsa couldn’t track their route, couldn’t focus past the power singing through her veins from the crystal’s proximity.
Too much. Everything was too much.
Consciousness slipped like sand through her fingers.
The last thing she registered was Sylas’s voice, low and furious, muttering something in his own language that the translator didn’t catch.
And the way his arms tightened around her, protective and possessive all at once.
Then darkness swallowed everything whole.